Berkeley election roundup: Arreguin elected mayor

Jesse Arreguin defeated his fellow councilman Laurie Capitelli and six others in the mayoral race, while City Council incumbent Darryl Moore lost in District 2 and incumbent Susan Wengraf was reelected in District 6.

BERKELEY — Jesse Arreguin was voted mayor in an election pervaded by subthemes of gentrification and the political power of landlords and developers. With all 108 Berkeley precincts reporting, Arreguin had outpolled his nearest rival, Laurie Capitelli, 47.4 percent to 33.6 percent, in an eight-candidate race. Ranked choice voting eventually put Arreguin over the top.

In a speech to supporters around midnight at his campaign night headquarters at the Ed Roberts Campus, Arreguin, short of declaring victory, thanked “all the people that believed in our vision of change, our vision of a new Berkeley.”

“Let’s move Berkeley into a new generation of progressive leadership,” he told an enthusiastic crowd.

Capitelli had received strong backing from the real estate industry, as did two incumbents in Berkeley City Council races, Darryl Moore in District 2 and Susan Wengraf in District 6.

But Moore was trailing Cheryl Davila by a slight margin, by virtue of the ranked choice computation, after outpolling her in the first round, 40.1 percent to 31 percent. Nanci Armstrong-Temple finished third. An unspecified number of absentee ballots have yet to be counted.

Sophie Hahn handily won the District 5 council seat being vacated by Capitelli, defeating another candidate with real estate industry backing, Stephen Murphy, 61.9 percent to 38.1 percent. Hahn is a member of the Zoning Adjustments Board. Capitelli endorsed Murphy, his appointee to the Planning Commission and the panel’s current chairman.

Ben Bartlett won the race for the District 3 seat being vacated by Councilman Max Anderson, with 56.9 percent. His opponents Deborah Matthews had 20.5 percent; Mark Coplan, 20.5 percent; and Al G. Murray, 2 percent. Anderson, who did not seek reelection, endorsed Bartlett.

In the mayor’s race, three of the eight candidates to succeed the retiring Tom Bates were current council members: Arreguin of District 4, Capitelli of District 5 and Kriss Worthington of District 7, who finished third with 8.4 percent.

In ranked choice voting, which applies to Berkeley’s mayoral and City Council races, voters rank up to three candidates for a given office in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated; that candidate’s votes are then transferred to each voter’s next-ranked choice.

The process is repeated until one candidate achieves a majority and is declared the winner.

Also at stake on Nov. 8 were four seats on the Rent Stabilization Board, won by Leah Simon-Weisberg, Alejandro Soto-Vigil, Christina Murphy and Igor Tregub; the four had run together as the CALI slate, after their first names.

They beat out incumbent Judy Hunt, and Nate Wollman, both of whom were backed by the Berkeley Property Owners Association.

Berkeley for several years has been the scene of a major debate over skyrocketing rents and the shortage of affordable housing, with a six-person council majority backing many controversial development-related issues.

Capitelli, along with Moore, Wengraf, Mayor Tom Bates and Council members Lori Droste and Linda Maio, supported what was perhaps the most divisive of the recent development proposals, for a mixed-use high-rise at 2211 Harold Way with 302 apartments, all market rate. It is the first project to be approved with the benefit of increased height allowances under the 2012 Downtown Plan.

Arreguin, Worthington and Anderson variously voted no or abstained when the project came before the council in December.

Defenders of the Harold Way project have said that upscale housing construction will ease soaring rents at the lower end, while opponents denounced it as too favorable for the developer.

The Berkeley Property Owners Association weighed in most heavily on two rival ballot measures in an unsuccessful attempt to thwart one and promote a substitute.

Measure U1, sponsored by the City Council, won by a landslide, 74.1 percent to 25.9 percent.

It calls for a business tax increase on owners of five or more residential rental units, from 1.081 percent to 2.880 percent of gross receipts, with certain exemptions.

Measure DD, sponsored by the Berkeley Rental Housing Coalition, BPOA’s political action committee, lost by a similar landslide, 70.8 percent no-votes to 29.2 percent yes.

It called for an increase in the business tax on owners of three or more residential rental units, from 1.081 percent to 1.5 percent of gross receipts.

The Committee for Real Affordable Housing — Yes on Measure DD, No on Measure U1, Sponsored by Berkeley Property Owners Association had spent more than $791,000 as of late last month, according to a campaign disclosure statement on file with the city.

In the Berkeley Unified School District race, where two seats were at stake, incumbent school board members Judy Appel and Beatriz Leyva-Cutler prevailed over challenger Abdur Sikder.

Analysts said Sunday's launch of what the Israeli military said was a midrange surface-to-surface missile may have been an attempt by Iran to establish a level of deterrence against Israel, which has repeatedly bombed its military assets in the country.